Madison Gas

High gas prices are inconvenient to all of us, but affect the poor disproportionately; they spend a higher percentage of their income on gasoline. Pat Bauer wants to throw the poor a "life raft" by cutting the $0.18/gallon tax on gasoline. This is a tempting political move, but it’s a step in the wrong direction. A six percent decrease in gas will ease the pain at the pump slightly, but in ten years there will still be poor people in Madison and gas will only be more expensive, taxes or not. Solving this problem requires different thinking.

Imagine a world where you can walk to the grocery and take public transportation to work. A shift toward higher population density will make us all less dependent on energy. We can get there, but not with Daniels’ energy policy. We need to make it easier to build up in downtown than out into our farmland. We need to invest in public transportation and yes, we need to further raise the price of gasoline through taxes. Such policies will be inconvenient and may change Madison beyond what anyone would recognize. But a world where we are not slaves to the gas pump might not be such a bad thing.